GH2 Have a feeling the 5D Mark III's video quality won't come close to the hacked GH2s

gonzo_entertainment said:
Again personal aesthetic is such a huge deal here. The footage from the two cameras looks very different. Some prefer one over the other, both have situations where they shine. A medium two shot with the 5D and about an 85 on there, one of the most gorgeous shots I've ever seen when executed well.
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Just saying... but there's no reason at all a GH2 can't do the same shot with a nice 45/50mm.
 
Well looks like GH2 will still be king on the resolution front. Only gripe I have with the GH2 is there is a lot of noise when you get around 640-1250. Does anyone else have problems in low light with this cam?
 
From what I've seen of the new 5D MkIII, Canon has dealt with their moire problem, upped the 12 minute limit to 29, put in a headphone jack and full manual audio gain control - and the sample videos I've seen look pretty good - but it still has a fixed LCD and no EVF, so you'll need to buy a loupe to shoot outdoors and a monitor for unusual angles.

And it is not clear that it has autofocus in video mode. Bottom line - it doesn't seem to be worth 4x the cost of a GH2, at least not to me.

If Panasonic gives us a headphone jack, manual audio gain and a little tougher body in the GH3 for less than $2000*, there will be no real reason to buy a MkIII unless there is a pre-existing investment in EF lenses or serious brand loyalty.

*uncompressed HDMI out and 1080/60p would be nice too :-)
 
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Jury's still out. Can't get a baring on if those videos were post sharpened or not. If not then it at lest looks close. If so then no thanks.
 
So the Mk3 has a headphone jack, manual audio control, reduced moire, 720p, can now do time code, and costs about $4000.

Wouldn't it be great if, for about $4000, Panasonic put out a professional camera system kind of like the GH2, but a little bigger, that did all those things, and, heck, maybe had XLR-in, a wide range of VFRs (heck, even 1080p60!), clean HDMI out (or HD-SDI!), and maybe even some built-in ND filters and other stuff?

Nah... it would never fly. Impossible.
 
'it doesn't seem to be worth 4x the cost of a GH2, at least not to me."

Biggest reason.... Full Frame. Without going into another long discussion of how the sensor is bigger than S35 and blah.. blah... Some of us like the look of FF. I'm not a pixel peeper. Once the quality of the image gets to a point that's "good enough" resolution wise, then the overall aesthetics of the image take over in importance. FF looks different, and I like it, a lot.
 
And don't forget rolling shutter. It was horrible on the 5dm2 and it's horrible on the GH2. So far, it looks much improved. For people like me that do need to move the camera a lot for kinetic fight scene action, it's a GH2 deal breaker.
 
As far as I'm concerned Rolling Shutter is horrible on all CMOS cameras to "varying" degrees. This camera is possibly slightly less horrible...but horrible nonetheless.m :)
 
The HDMI issue is where the price becomes a problem for me... Why, when my AF100 or GH2 can take advantage of my Nanoflash, can't the 5dmk3? If I had to choose between a 5dmk3 or... a 5dmk2 and a GH2... or even 3 GH2's for that matter... I don't see how I could realistically pick the 5dmk3... Don't get me wrong it looks like a super nice camera and I'm sure it'll be all over the place so if your a dp you'll shoot on it, but I just could think of a few other ways I'd spend the money. It's enough of a difference cost wise that you could buy a GH2 with external monitor, rails, lenses, ff, matte box, a set of filters, sd cards, pelican case, basic shoulder rig and have just reached the cost of the 5dmk3... I want to justify buying it but I think I'm just going to invest in other places. I hope the price comes down to where the current 5dmk2 market is quickly, but I doubt it because I'm sure this camera will sell and do very well... If only the HDMI was up to par... And the price was a few thousand less.
 
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The crippled HDMI /might/ be a non-issue if the 5D3's supposed "high bit rate intra frame codec" proves to be good enough... I know that, post hack, I haven't had cause to bother with external recorders on my GH2, so perhaps Canon thought this was the way to go. Nano records to CF, and you've got a perfectly acceptable CF slot in-body, so why not trim the middleman?

Of course this is all conjecture
 
One reason I can instantly think of is that the 5dmk3 has a locked LCD so an external monitor and most likely hood loop will be needed. The other is that the 800 dollar GH2 can send out a clean hdmi signal where the 5dmk3 cannot. I haven't been using the nano on the gh2 since I loaded driftwoods seaquake, it's for use on the af100 only or for long timelapse shoots. But the fact that the 5dmk3 needs an external monitor to shoot in many situations means that at least the hdmi out could be clean.
 
HDkilledFILM. said:
The HDMI issue is where the price becomes a problem for me... Why, when my AF100 or GH2 can take advantage of my Nanoflash, can't the 5dmk3? If I had to choose between a 5dmk3 or... a 5dmk2 and a GH2... or even 3 GH2's for that matter... I don't see how I could realistically pick the 5dmk3... Don't get me wrong it looks like a super nice camera and I'm sure it'll be all over the place so if your a dp you'll shoot on it, but I just could think of a few other ways I'd spend the money. It's enough of a difference cost wise that you could buy a GH2 with external monitor, rails, lenses, ff, matte box, a set of filters, sd cards, pelican case, basic shoulder rig and have just reached the cost of the 5dmk3... I want to justify buying it but I think I'm just going to invest in other places. I hope the price comes down to where the current 5dmk2 market is quickly, but I doubt it because I'm sure this camera will sell and do very well... If only the HDMI was up to par... And the price was a few thousand less.
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Well personally, I can only shoot one camera myself at a time, so 3 GH2's would be kind of a waste :) (And yes, I am kidding with you because I know you probably have multiple shooters)

Here is the thing for me, I don't want an external recorder. Not now, not ever. The whole thing I love about the DSLR is the size and weight of the setup. I want the IN camera recording to be good. This sounds like it's MUCH improved over the previous encoding implementations. We all have different requirements and I bet the majority of 5Dm3 users will never hook up an external recorder to them. Of course, that's because the majority will be stills! :)
 
True, but even saying that it seems *SEEMS, but is not PROVEN yet* that the 5dmk3 is on par with the GH2 in video quality, however, with less features than a camera which costs less than a 1/3rd of it. For stills it's no contest, canon wins. But the fact that the gh2 is even in the conversation as an equal or better video camera makes the price difference a bit much (*FOR ME*). Sure you might not need three camera's, but a fully equipped camera with all the things you need to have a DSLR function in a video setting? And if you need a stills camera? At this point you can buy a GH2 (Body only) and 5dMk2 (Used) for less than the cost of a new 5dmk3... Then you have at the very least a back up or B cam which also takes amazing photos. Don't get me wrong, I get it, the 5dMk3 has some pretty great looking features and the video's I've seen (Haven't seen any raw footage yet) all look great... I just want more out of it because I'm spoiled by the camera's already on the market.
 
The problem is, it's not always such a simple answer and people like to constantly throw around JUST the price difference of the body alone. I have ALL EOS glass that does not have manual aperture. So if I have to sell my glass and/or buy new glass, that's quite a bit more money. Second, if I want to wait for an electronic adapter, looks like at least $1k on average? Now if I add an external recorder, now I am another $1000? If I want to use the GH2 on my 12ft crane, that articulating screen is going to really do nothing for me. I *always* have to use an external LCD for this situation.

I'm not saying a DSLR is a bad camera either, I own a 7D and have shot a lot of stuff that people really enjoy watching. I am not in the camp that I need a camera dedicated to video to be used for video. Frankly, I think there is A LOT for the video divisions to learn from the stills divisions on button/dial ergonomics at the minimum. I recommend the GH2 to a lot of people because, for it's price it's a great deal and definitely the top DSLR performer released at the moment. But, if you need Full Frame for tighter shooting, there is no question, the 5dm2 wins. I don't myself, I like S35 sized sensors and the m4/3 is close enough ( I owned an AF100 for awhile so I am familiar with that crop size).

But for me, as I've said, resolving power is actually not the number one issue, it's rolling shutter. Kinetic movements look horrible on cameras with >20ms rolling shutters and the GH2 is above 20ms. The FS/AF100 both are at 15ms and are much better but not perfect. Given the difference between 20ms on the 7D to 15ms is VERY noticeable when shooting, I cannot imagine how the 5ms of the C300 feels! That's just damn impressive.

The GH1 and 5D were around 25ms.

The Nikon D90 is 33ms and it is ABSOLUTELY horrible (I own one).

I'll say this as well, the slanted lines are just ONE aspect of jello to deal with. At >20ms you can REALLY see compression/decompression in fast tilts which is the "jello" look. At 15ms and below, the jello reduces to imperceptible to me even on up to 85mm and some pretty quick moves. At 1/48 exposure, there is a relationship between motion blur and what you can detect is going on with how far the distortion happens in frame. But I do shoot at MUCH faster exposures as well for effect (1/240) and even then, with the FS100 I am not seeing the jello. I can still get the slant of course if I pan too quickly, but that effects goes away much slower comparing read/reset times (rolling shutter).

And I'll say this, for narrative work, once you've had ND filters built in (AF100) you will REALLY miss them. I NEVER expected them on a DSLR.

What I want to know about is the crop filming modes. Can I do APS-C size on the 5dm2? How is the quality of that? How much faster is the rolling shutter? (Just like when you run in ETC on the GH2, the rolling shutter is MUCH faster).

I won't be rushing out to get one, but maybe in a few years it would make a nice replacement for my 7D when they come down in price AND give me the option of Full Frame or APS-C (if the crop ability is confirmed and it isn't).

I think the camera people are gonna want is the 4K cDSLR and not this one.
 
Actually, I think the new 5D will be closer to the GH2 in that we are now talking 91Mbit/s All-I. Strikes me that the same kind of hack as we are seeing from the Vitaly and Magic Lantern could give us a much more operable tool and I am not so sure that 91Mbit/s is not already enough. Even on the GH2 66Mbit/s is quite adequate and we are now talking about a sensor which is going to provide considerably more detail and light sensitivity because it is FF.
So my opinion is exactly the opposite of the OP's. I think the two will come quite close to each other.

I also agree with Rick. The real issue now is the rolling shutter and that is something which appears to be much better on this camera than the GH2 or previous 5D.
 
This really bugs me, the 5D3 is looking so good right now. DR, moire, the main things taking this camera down a few notches have been taken care of (as far we know from the samples...). But... the main reason I actually switched from the 5DII to the GH2 in the first place, was actually 2 things. 1) motion characteristics / cadence, which in this case I've personally found the hacked gh2 to mimic film-like motion the best out of the DSLRs. 2) Detail. The insane amount of detail coming through on the all-I patches is so good that it's more addicting than crack.

From what I can tell, the higher 91mbps bit rate is really going to be a big improvement. But the one single thing that still makes me back off just a bit... is the motion. The 5D has such a powerful, overwhelming even, "look" to it that it can make almost anyone fall in love with its FF image; but the motion / cadence still seems just a bit off for me. This is one area where the gh2 pretty much hit the nail on the head, and is keeping me grounded until I can be swept off my feet. Can't wait for some real tests from the community to start showing up.
 
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